Regions of the Philippines

Map of the Philippines showing the regions and their provinces (click for larger version).

A region (Filipino: Rehiyon) is an administrative subdivision in the Philippines. As of 2002, there are 17 of them and 16 of them are further subdivided into 81 provinces (lalawigan). Regions are generally organized to group provinces that have the same cultural and ethnological characteristics.

The provinces are actually the primary political subdivision. They are grouped into regions for administrative convenience. Most government offices establish regional offices instead of individual provincial offices, usually (but not necessarily always) in the city designated as the regional center.

The regions themselves do not possess a separate local government, with the exception of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which has an elected regional assembly and governor. The Cordillera Administrative Region was originally intended to be autonomous (Cordillera Autonomous Region), but the failure of two plebiscites for its establishment, reduced it to a regular administrative region.

Contents

List of regions

The Philippines consists of 17 regions. The regions are geographically combined into the three island groups of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Following is a list of the regions in their island groupings. To get overviews of the regions, see the respective articles on the island groups.

The names of CALABARZON, MIMARO and SOCCSKSARGEN are capitalized because they are acronyms that stand for their component provinces or cities.

History

Regions first came to existence in on September 24, 1972 when the provinces of the Philippines were organized into 11 regions by Presidential Decree No. 1 as part of the Integrated Reorganization Plan of President Ferdinand Marcos.

Since that time, other regions have been created and some provinces have been transferred from one region to another.

July 7, 1975 - Region XII created and minor reorganization of some Mindanao regions.